


Why Comes Not Death

by shakespearespaz



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespearespaz/pseuds/shakespearespaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not letting you do this.” Slight AU where Miles and Rachel end up at the Tower together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Comes Not Death

 

  _Why stand we longer shivering under fears,_

_That show no end but death, and have the power,_

_Of many ways to die the shortest choosing,_

_Destruction with destruction to destroy._

**_Paradise Lost \_ Book X**

 

Miles stopped her from killing herself.

Rachel would've called it fate laughing smugly at her, but she’d finished believing in such nonsense long ago, when her life became do or die and she decided that she alone was to blame for her suffering.

It would’ve been too easy to stand there, stand statuesque her ground like she had learned to do over the years even as her insides melted from hope to despair.

She’d demanded that he let her stay as the countdown to destroy the Tower began, and even reminders of Charlie could not budge her. She had no place in Charlie’s life. The man who wrapped his arms around her solid torso and turned her way from the blast was the one who had made sure of that.

“I was only finishing what you started,” bit the air bitterly between them afterward, after he had returned her feet to solid ground.

He knew for many nights to come he would wake with the sensation of falling heavy in his stomach. Only she would not be pressed tight against him, under him, as he tried to shield her from the debris she’d meant to welcome.

He’d failed physics twice in high school, but knew enough to doubt that they should still be alive; an elevator was a steel box and like all things there were certain heights they could not weather.

But here they were.

She sat in the dirt, eyes on the pot of water boiling and nothing else.

A quip floated across his tongue, a saying he may have remembered from a past long ago, but forgotten it disappeared.

Her head was still bleeding, but as they had stumbled from the destruction she had pushed him away once his grip was finally loose enough for escape. He had managed his own injuries without her help, but she had forgone all attempts at self-preservation.

“You’re going to eat something, Rachel,” he warned across the haze of the fire.

“Tea,” she said.

“No.” He shoved a pack of crackers in her hand and shuffled around for more. “Don’t make me feed them to you.”

“I’m not yours to take care of, Miles,” she told him harshly, “You’ve lost that privilege.”

“Too bad.”

He joined her on the ground, retrieving a torn piece of cloth from his bag and wetting it in the water.

“Miles—” She didn’t move, but her voice advised angrily to stay away.

“You don’t have to do anything but keep sitting there like a zombie.”

She flinched as the warmth made contact. As he worked at coagulated blood, moving dirty, matted hair aside, Rachel pulled her knees to her chest.

He sighed in frustration as she let her head fall forward, out of his reach.

“Rachel, stop.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re acting like a child.”

No response came and the water in the pot began to boil softly.

“I’m not letting you starve yourself or bleed to death,” he laid out for her.

She picked her head up and her eyes were the clearest they had been that evening, the directness and determination scaring him.

“Why not?”

He licked his lips, still cracked and dry from the heat of the explosion.

“Charlie deserves a chance with you.”

‘And you with her’ was tacked on implicitly.

“Even if we could find her again…” Rachel’s voice barely reached his ears. “I’ve failed at all the right things and succeeded at all the wrong ones. I had two children. Now, it’s all just...”

Her brow knotted and she hid her face against her knees again.

She didn’t mean to accuse but her words pierced Miles’ worn exterior, a red-hot poker shoved into his gut. He had left Charlie behind too, chasing Rachel hopelessly across the country under the guise that he had to stop her. Let the world fall further to shit, but he couldn’t let her turn the power back on.

Instead they destroyed the only means to return life to normal and in doing so prevented a further wave of chaos and destruction.

As they had assembled the bomb Nora had sent with him, though, Rachel had greeted it and not him like an old lover. He had finally understood why she told Charlie she wasn’t returning.

It didn’t mean he accepted it.

Instead he delicately lifted her face back into the light.

“Don’t move,” he asked.

She listened and let him work, words swallowed by the dark that waited beyond their small camp.

“I’ve heard the Commonwealth is nice this time of year,” he suggested to her when the quiet became too much to bear.

“What?”

“Once we find Charlie, and if we ever see Aaron again. Nora’s never been to the West Coast. If we could tear her away from the Rebels we could show it to her.”

She chewed on her lip and he wanted to reach out and stop her; she had bled enough.

“And Bass?”

“With no power for anyone, he’ll fall in time. There’ll only be another Militia to take his place.”

“And we just escape back to another suburban cul-de-sac?”

“I managed to, at least until your stubborn daughter found me.”

“You were tending a bar in the heart of Chicago, I heard.”

If she was joking with him that was a good sign.

“The provincial life might not suit me, but I could try, Rache,” he continued, “Pretend I like kids and find community dinners thrilling. Maybe I could even run for an elected position and be in charge of compost or something. I might not be able to give you back your perfect life, but I could try.”

He had coaxed a slight smile out of hiding.

“It was never perfect, Miles.”

“It doesn’t have to be. Just some peace would be nice.”

“How do you do it?” she questioned tentatively, “How does each day not hurt worse than the one before?”

Miles had finished cleaning her wound long before, but had continued to untangle messy curls lightly with his fingers.

He withdrew his hand; for this she turned her face towards him.

“In Chicago I could’ve cared less if I was killed in some drunken brawl. I deserved it, wanted it even. But Charlie came, with her friends and innocent blue eyes like—” 

He stopped. They both heard what he was about to say anyway.

“I was required to care for them, by some stupid familial code.”

A steady breath paced through him.

“But I needed them, Rachel. More than they really needed me. What do we have when everything falls apart? The idiots we love. They’re our survival.”

He ended nonchalantly with an awkward nod, surprised that he could string so many sincere words together.

“Even if you lose them?” she prompted painfully.

Even if you lose them to things other than death, he wanted to tell her, like power and paranoia.

Instead his arm snuck familiarly around her waist, her head finding his shoulder as she gave in.

“Sometimes they have a way of returning unexpectedly.”

Rachel’s lips entertained a smile, but she did not speak. Silence once again became their mother tongue.

They fell comfortably together, Miles tracing lingering circles on her back while Rachel picked mindlessly at a frayed hole in his jeans.

“I think the water’s ready,” she announced after several lengthy moments had wandered by.

“If there’s any left,” he teased.

She made tea as he gathered a meager meal for them to share, the two planning out their new life by the warm glow of the dying fire.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully there was enough context for this revealed throughout the piece? I've actually thought through the scenario of him (and probably company) following her and Aaron mainly because I was rather disappointed that the show didn't give us much time with all of them together before splitting into separate plot lines again. Also, someone take John Milton away from me.


End file.
